Top Nav

All But Gone

God willing, I will be celebrating my 77th birthday in October and I guess reminiscing kinda goes along with the territory, or at least it seems that I tend to do quite a bit of it lately.

Looking back over the seven plus decades I've been on this planet is fascinating, enlightening and a wake-up call to just how rapidly things have moved and are moving, how quickly times, attitudes, traditions, technology and the measurement of what true character really is are morphing into a world that people who died even 20 years ago would have a hard time recognizing.

Some of the change has been good, some bad, some pointless and some disastrous, but there's nothing unusual about that. I think it's always been that way. But, since we live in the most meticulously documented century in human history, we are privy to the happenings of our times as no other generation has ever been.

When I was a kid, it took all night long to count the returns in a presidential election. I remember in 1948 when I caught the school bus, Thomas Dewey had been announced the winner of the election - but, when I got back home that afternoon the rest of the votes had been counted and Harry Truman had won.

So much for educated guesses.

In my early youth, there were still a few horses and wagons used for family transportation, and driving by a country church on a Sunday morning you were apt to see a couple tied up in the church yard. And, if you saw one ahead of you on the road, you had to almost stop until you could find a good place to pass.

People had no problem with the display of religious articles in public places and there was a time when I had never even met anyone who didn't believe in God.

The "enlightened" society of today gags at the appearance of a cross, but have no problem ending the life inside a fourteen girl without so much as parental consent.

From my earliest remembrances, some summers have been hotter than others and some winters have been colder than others. I remember one Christmas when it was warm enough to go barefooted and others that were freezing, cool spells in summer, hurricanes and unseasonably dry and wet weather.

But, now the "really smart folks" are trying to take the universal thermostat out of the hands of the One who designed the system and put it under control of mere men who can't raise or lower the temperature of the planet 1/100 of a degree, no matter how many carbon credits they sell.

I think what bothers me about the global warming thing is the all-out effort to perpetuate an international lie and the hypocrisy of pointing fingers at America where the temperatures are basically the same as they were sixteen years ago and the CO2 emissions are at a 20-year low.

Why don't they cast their eyes toward places like China where air pollution is ten times worse than it ever has been in the U.S. on its worst day.

Or, the third world countries where the population is deforesting the country for firewood and building supplies, or the many places on the planet where raw sewage is being pumped into the watershed.

When and if I listen to music on the radio nowadays, which is not often, I don't even recognize the name of the artists and with the rare occasion I can tell very little difference in them, anyway.

I ain't knocking it; I'm just saying that music has changed and I haven't, and I'm sure a lot of people felt the same way about CDB when we came along all those years ago.

Don't watch the networks much anymore, except sports and a little news. I do enjoy Hell on Wheels, Homeland, Justified and a few other cable offerings, but it seems the older I get, the more I love to read.

An affectation of age, I suppose.

I guess I'm just basically out of touch with the mainstream world and there was a day when that would have bothered me a lot, but now it bothers me not at all.

I just like my little world better: it's populated with family, real friends, horses, grandchildren, guns, calves, rods and reels, four wheelers and a back porch I can walk on out in my underwear if I want to.